Bush and Google

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3298443.stm

what do you think of it? Was that meant or is it just by chance?

Well, all I can say is that linking the words miserable failure (http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html) over and over can cause a miserable failure (http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html) on the part of google. Does this mean that google is a miserable failure (http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html) ? No, I just shows how much of a miserable failure (http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html) a miserable failure (http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html) of a search can be if amiserable failure (http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html) of a web programmer creates a miserable failure (http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html) of a website!

:D
:D
:D

Nice Post;) ;) ;) ;) :thumbsup:

I don't really like Bush very much, however, I wonder what Gore would have done on Sept 11th.

"Bad Osama, Bad. Now let me slap your hand. That was mean..."

At least Bush had the balls to fight back (http://www.cafeshops.com/thewhitehouse.7295717).

well my point is not to talk about politics... I'm just wondering if someone is behind that or if it just happened like that... What are the statistics to link those two words to that precise person?

It's called google bombing, and is actually a well known seo technique.

Basically, Google ranks keywords based on their use in a web page (along with other criteria). If the page text is in <h1> tags, it gets a higher ranking than if it were normal text. Words that are linked, are usually ranked higher than non-linked words and so on.

So, alot of people in their blogs linked the text "miserable failure" to Bush's bio, thus google thinks these words should be associated with him (Political comment: I couldn't agree more).

I see... thank you very much. I did not know about this practice. Very interesting. Thanx a lot bcarl314.

We have enough people here, we should try it :D .

I know just the perfect search terms and page as well. :D

Who cares what Al Gore would have done, what your saying is jsut a hypothethis, what hs George Bush done? Has he got Ousama? Has he even given his hand a slap? Did he when Ousama was in the american hospital of Dubaï in august 2001? Nope. You want pertinant news? Or just a bit of the truth? Have you forgotten what he USA has done since WW2?

www.gnn.tv

Anyways, enough of politics. Shouldnt google take off this feature because its lets a minority choose what everyone else sees (like afre mentioned persons in previous paragraph. ok, now i'll stop)? Google seems to be leaning more to the profit side on the profit - services scale recently IMO (with google ads, sponsored ads etc) This isnt a bad thing, but its the best search engine out there and should stay it.


edit: is it against policy to talk about politics here? i wasnt really shure when i started ranting. sorry :p

since there are no mods for this forum, I guess the person who starts a thread is supposed to kind of mod its own thread. So I will please ask people who post about this topic no to go into the political aspect of it, just the technical issue is interesting here. :)

hey mod :D

You to will get off-topiced like for instance, let's take a minut to analyse the paralels betheen you and the miserable failure. Your names sound more a less the same, some tendency to dominate, order, ... :)

I don't think this calls for any need to change the algoritme Google uses. I mean, all this realy proves is that these words are rarely used as (heigh weighted) content like a link-text + that there is a public that's intrested in this little joke.

I don't feel like trying it, but if i would set up a few pages with links like "bouchel" that point to a bush bio, then it wouldn't take to long before the searchterm bouchel turns up the bush bio on top. I don't think more then a handfull of peoplewould be intrested.
But try it the other way arround --> have the keyword "bush" turn up your bio or a "miserable failure" page. That would be realy fooling google.

So there's nothing wrong with the google algoritme (in fact, if i'm not mistaking, google was the first that took in account how many sites linked to you, and it was this innovation that enhanced their search-algoritme and made their succes). It's true that you can get your page higher ranked but i'll let you try it for more commen used searchterms. Good luck !

Originally posted by raf
hey mod :D

You to will get off-topiced like for instance, let's take a minut to analyse the paralels betheen you and the miserable failure. Your names sound more a less the same, some tendency to dominate, order, ... :)

lol :p you discovered who is behind that username! :D

Originally posted by bouchel
lol :p you discovered who is behind that username! :D
Yeah. I googled for it :D

Originally posted by raf
Yeah. I googled for it :D
si if you discovered my little dirty secret thanx to google, you're right about their algorythm... it's a pretty good one :D

see? I had to change my username :p

Originally posted by whackaxe
Shouldnt google take off this feature because its lets a minority choose what everyone else sees


Actually, I takes quit a large number of sites to produce significant results like the one mentioned here. I doubt there are enough people in this forum to change it. We could try. Lets all make web pages linking the words "miserable failure" to Ronald Reagan's (or any other person you dislike) bio and see if we can make a difference. I doubt we'd even register.

Let's link Bill Gates to WA. :D

Just an ethic question: let's pretend that we would do such a practice for each one of us that has a site, in order to get it a good rank. What would guys you think of it? Would you think this is something that should not be done or do you think it would be a good idea so that other people can benefit from your site?

Ethical? Is it ethical to put an appealing or sensational title on top of a dull article? I think that all commercial activity is in one way or another unethical. And selfpromotion of your site falls under that to. But what does it all matter?

Mislead people leave your site within seconds and never come back, so unless your a counter-fetishist or unless your hoping to get rich on adds, there's no point. if you've got interesting content, people will find it. And you don't need to put it on your own site. Their are plenty of possebilitys to deliver your content (or to spread links to your site) to the masses, using existing more popular sites.

Personnaly, I would not do it... However I can understand that some people do it at the beginning of their site. Now if this is for money, or if this means misleading people with sensational title then I don't understand it.

<edit>
my point is: this practice doesn't inevitably mislead people. It is not an ethical one, we agree with it. I would not it because I wanna know that if my site has a good rank it is because of "popular demand" and not because of some trick. But let's pretend that a google serch for coding+forums did not give codingforums.com in the results, would it misleading people to link these words to this site? No. That would not be a good thing, but that would not be misleading.
</edit>

Originally posted by bcarl314
Actually, I takes quit a large number of sites to produce significant results like the one mentioned here. I doubt there are enough people in this forum to change it. We could try. Lets all make web pages linking the words "miserable failure" to Ronald Reagan's (or any other person you dislike) bio and see if we can make a difference. I doubt we'd even register.
More seriously... Why wouldn't we make the experience? One of us could make a page that we could try to get ranked on google by our links. Something that would not harm anyone of course ;)

You'd have to come up with a very convincing reason for my blog to link to a page -- ONE page, as part of a Google bombing run.

It's not just because because I rarely update my own blog. It's because although I appreciate a good joke as much as the next guy, I'm not one to hurt anyone by my nature. These Google bombs in effect take advantage of Google, basically twisting one of the best search engines out there against the customers.

As much as I like working with WA (I'm on a first-name basis with the guy, and we've never met), I think trying to tie him to B.G. is a V.B.I. (Very Bad Idea.) I don't make forums policy for any forum but XML, but I'm going to strongly suggest to him that we not encourage any member on this board to attempt a Google bombing coordination here.

Google bombing does hurt someone. It hurts Google, as a credible and reliable search engine company.

wow wow wow!!!! Alex you are definitly misunderstanding me... I am not trying to harm google. I use it all the time and, as stated, I am against this practice. However the experiment I was talking about was maybe link a word that would not be problematic just to check if we can get a page ranked. I want to add that it was just a PROPOSITION. A google bombing coordination was not the purpose of this post, neither of this thread. I am sorry if I have been misunderstood. I love CF, definitly (I say it all the time), so I would not do something that could be problematicfor the site!

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I would like to add that I find a bit abusive to replace the words I used by "a Google bombing run". That was not my idea. That was a discussion about the possibility to get a page ranked for a non problematic search word, and if that is something that could have been done the "clean way". Maybe I was not clear, I hope that now I am. The idea is: instead of typing an adress directly (of a innofensive site), the page could have been reached trough such a process. No "bombing issue" in my mind when I posted. :(
Again, this a discussion, this a talk... no more!
</edit>

Alex,

I couldn't agree more. Google bombing now-a-days is a cracker / script-kiddie activity. The original few who found the flaw with google were, most likely, hackers. Who by definition, are trying to figure out how a system works. Those who exploit known flaws in systems are crackers / script-kiddies and are often using these attackes for personal gain.

I like to dig deeper when I ask a question so what I am wondering at this point is when does this practice turns into an attack? I mean, these people exploiting these known flaws and doing it in order to make money are working on keywords that are highly serched. Like "money", "s---xe" and so on. So they have to use hundreds (if not thousands) of links to get a high rank. Does that mean that they are actually using a real lot of sites? It is not clear in my mind. How the people who decided to link miserable failure to Bush bio achieved that? I don't fully get it at this point of the thread. I can understand that if we all make the experiment to link "my bonzaï tree name is musashi" (well or something like that ;)) to a page having a picture of my bonzaï tree and decide to visit this page trough this specific link that would not be that hard to be ranked on google right? Or even for such a precise thing would we need a whole lot of websites? To make it clear, I am just trying to understand the functionning of it. I do not support this practice which is obviously used for discutable purposes. Alex Vincent: I think that it is maybe what you didn't fully understand. Anyways, I wouldn't have the knowledge to coordinate anything like that believe me :o I am just curious on how things work.

Originally posted by Spookster
Let's link Bill Gates to WA. :D That's what I meant when I was joking a few posts up :D...

I know, I overreacted with my response. I just felt it appropriate to put a quick stop to any idle speculation about us manipulating Google.

I coined the term "Google bombing run" on the spot. I'm not suggesting anything about your truest intentions; the transition from harmless observation of the trend to potentially setting up a page we could entice Google to link to was alarming to me.

Again, I may be one of the more respected voices around here (and I'm very aware of that -- I actually toned down my response a little because of it), but believe me, I have been wrong before. When in doubt, when you think I may have overstepped appropriate behavior, please feel free to contact George, who goes by WA. I assure you, whenever I say something which I think is controversial, I consult with him; he's overridden me before, and ultimately, this is his board, not mine.

Coordination, I suppose, is the wrong word; all it takes is one guy saying "Hey, let's do this, it'll be fun," and a bunch of people reading it, agreeing to do it, and blammo: Google bomb. That's precisely how the first Google bomb happened. Nobody forced people to do it; they did it because it was amusing.

That's what I felt I had to stop. I'm truly sorry that I misunderstood. It's one of those touchy issues that I as a moderator on this forum (albiet in the XML portion) felt I should address. Call it a social contract of responsibility from one of the more senior members of the board; I had to say something to help out in management of the board in general, and I didn't mean it against you or any other member specifically.

Hey Alex, don't worry. I perfectly understand what you did. I just wanted to make clear that I had nothing in my mind that could harm CF or Google. Reading your post, I totally understand your reaction and respect it. I'm glad we understand each other now.

Cheers

:)